


Organ Donor

by EndoplasmicPanda



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Arguing, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Canon, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18613834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: Everything Adam Parrish did, he did for other people.It was the little things. Never taking the last slice of pizza at Nino’s. Never taking long in the shower. Never being a bother, a nuisance, a troubling memory. Never taking a handout. And then, of course, there was Cabeswater.Ronan Lynch was sick of it.Not of Adam, in particular. Another Adam. Because there were two Adams in Ronan’s life: the one that suffered, and the one the first did all his suffering for.





	1. Chapter 1

Everything Adam Parrish did, he did for other people.

It was the little things. Never taking the last slice of pizza at Nino’s. Never taking long in the shower. Never being a bother, a nuisance, a troubling memory. Never taking a handout. And then, of course, there was Cabeswater.

Ronan Lynch was _sick_ of it.

Not of Adam, in particular. Another Adam. Because there were two Adams in Ronan’s life: the one that suffered, and the one the first did all his suffering for.

They were at 300 Fox Way, because of course they were, and Blue and Gansey were there, too, because of course they were.

When Ronan looked around at the rest of them, a coil of nerves in his gut asked if all of this was another one of Adam’s selfishly selfless acts, too.

They were seated together on the couch; Gansey and Blue had stolen a pair of chairs from the reading room down the hall, and had only invited the searing glares of Calla and Orla and the roll of the eyes from Maura, which was a testament to how well-received their motley gang of kings and kingmakers had become in Blue’s life.

Beside Ronan, Adam sighed. It was a soft sigh, something personal, and as such Ronan did something entirely un-Ronan-like and ignored it.

“We were thinking Costa Rica first,” Gansey said, scrolling through a map on his phone, the reflection of the screen dancing across his wire-frame glasses. He angled it toward Blue, who showed no hesitations in leaning into his space and scrolling, too.

“Not that I have much say in the matter,” Blue said, “but I want to do Peru.”

“Peru?” Gansey asked, frowning. For a man three weeks dead, three weeks re-reborn, he looked remarkably well-assembled. But that was Gansey for you. “I thought you wanted to do Venezuela?”

“Politics,” Blue said, shrugging.

“Maybe she just wants to see the Nazca Lines,” Ronan said. He smirked. “Wants to see a dick carved into a roadside.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Bite me, Lynch.”

“Anytime, Sargent.”

“Ladies, please,” Gansey said with a sigh. Blue snorted, and Ronan smiled.

Adam’s weight shifted on the couch beside him. Blue watched with a raised eyebrow and a quiet smirk, and Ronan continued to ignore it. Gansey, for all his credit, buried his nose back into his maps.

“What about you two?” she asked, looking right into Ronan’s eyes. “You’re invited, too, you know.”

“I was invited every time Gansey left the country on one of his crusades,” Ronan said, as if that changed anything.

“Ronan Lynch doesn’t want to travel,” Gansey said, not looking up.

“I don’t want to travel,” Ronan agreed.

“Ronan Lynch was not the only person to whom I was referring,” Blue said.

“Please don’t Richard Gansey the Third at me,” Richard Gansey the Third said. “It’s weird.”

Blue was halfway through explaining how the rich didn’t have a moratorium on good grammar when Ronan tuned them out, crossing his arms and sinking back into the couch until he could smell whoever sat there last.

That was the question, wasn’t it? What did Adam want to do?

There was a time, not too long before, where Ronan could have found Adam’s dreams on a map, because the simple answer was “anything not Virginia.” Ronan always felt as though it was a childish want, to leave, but Ronan also had, arguably, the strangest dreams of anyone on the planet, so he wasn’t particularly one to judge.

The Adam of now, though, the Adam of a post-Cabeswater, post-Glendower world, was a different Adam than before. And Ronan was having a hard time reconciling with the fact that they likely were never different Adams to begin with.

Across the house, the phone rang. Muffled shouting erupted from various places, and all of them said one thing: “Blue--”

“I got it,” Gansey said, standing, stretching and groaning like an old man getting up from Christmas dinner. “How hard could it be to answer the phone for a house full of psychics?”

“Not much different than answering the phone for the house of a member of Congress,” Blue said, leaning back. In her eyes, she was thankful.

And that was another thing. A calm ley line meant more time for other things. In Blue and Gansey’s case, it was dating - in all the slimey, gross, lovey-dovey ways that made Ronan want to puke, or run away, or puke and run away.

But there was also the Thing between him and Adam. Was that dating? Was that the same thing?

“If you fall asleep in here, you’d better not get blood on the carpet when you wake up,” Blue said, watching him.

“I’m not sleeping,” Ronan said. He yawned.

Blue nodded at Adam. “He is,” she said.

Ronan chanced a look, and realized, all at once, that it didn’t matter if they were dating or not, if they were as lovey-dovey and gross as Blue and Gansey were. There _was_ something there. There likely _always_ was something there.

Adam, for all his credit, slid to the side and planted his face into Ronan’s shoulder.

Ronan ran his hand along Adam’s back, wiggled it up around his side, buried his fingers into Adam’s hair. It was still a little wet from the shower he’d stolen in Blue’s bathroom before Gansey had arrived, still warm from where he’d pressed it into the couch afterwards and promptly fallen asleep. He smelled like Maura’s peach-fuzz conditioner and just enough like motor oil to remind Ronan where it was he’d been all day.

Adam sighed and threw an arm around Ronan’s waist. If he was awake, he’d be mortified. Ronan smirked and pulled it closer.

“Gross,” Blue said, smiling.

‘Says the future First Lady,” Ronan said.

She made a fake gagging sound and propped her feet up on Gansey’s chair. “That’s assuming I’m not the one running things instead of him.”

Ronan smirked. There was something poetically satisfying about the thought.

“Are you two fighting?” Blue asked, so quickly after that Ronan thought she was talking about Ronan and Gansey. But when Ronan looked at her, traced her line of sight to the boy in his arms, he realized what she meant.

Yes. Maybe. Ronan didn’t know. Their relationship, friendship-based or otherwise, was always in some state of aggressive flux. That was their dynamic - Adam kept Ronan grounded, and Ronan kept Adam moving. Or maybe it was the other way around.

“I guess?” he said, quiet, looking down at the way Adam’s head had nestled itself into the valley of Ronan’s lap. He ran his fingers along the hair dusting Adam’s bad ear.

“You guess.” Blue looked at him in a way that left no room for doubt that she was Maura’s child. “You can’t just _guess_ about something like that, Lynch.”

“Then what?” Ronan snapped. “What is this?” He gestured at his lap, at himself, at the house. “What is all of this?”

Blue let out a long, harrowed breath. “You’re hopeless. You know that? If I know more about your boyfriend than you do, then what does that say? I have my own fish to fry.”

Ronan blinked. “You know?”

“About how mad he is at you right now? Yes.” Blue crossed her arms over her tattered, paint-covered overalls.

Ronan didn’t say anything.

“You’re not going to ask?”

Ronan stared.

Blue gestured vaguely at the air between them in a gesture that was more Gansey than anything else, something that said _the nerve_. “Fine. Fine! He’s pissed because you’re still trying to go behind his back. I’d assume you’d be smart enough by now to know where to draw the line, where to respect his boundaries, but apparently not, and apparently you’re not enough of an adult to figure that out yourself.”

The fact Ronan’s face was still blank must have been enough for Blue to realize he had no idea what she was talking about, and she shook her head.

“Hopeless,” she muttered. “Utterly hopeless.”

“I’m mad at him too,” Ronan said, like some sort of pittance, like Blue was the pastor and he was in confessions and felt obligated to settle the score. “Did he tell you that part, too?”

“Are you mad at him for real, or are you just mad because he’s mad?” Blue grumbled. “I guess this is the part where I say you’re perfect for each other. He’s just as out of it as you are.” Ronan opened his mouth, but Blue raised a finger. “No. Not me. Tell _him_. I’m not your babysitter, or your emotional laborer. Figure your shit out yourselves.”

They heard footsteps approaching and Gansey reappeared in the doorway, eyes wide.

“How’d it go?” Blue asked. She went from mad to something else in less time than it took to flip a switch, and Ronan felt a pang of envy light up his chest. Ronan Lynch, for all his credit, was not good at hiding things.

“Why do you need an industrial supply of doll’s heads?” Gansey muttered.

“I don’t,” Blue said. Adam stirred in Ronan’s lap; she watched but said nothing. “My mother does. Sometimes it helps in readings. Or something.”

Gansey, content to take her at her word, sank into his chair, kicking Blue’s legs off with a gentle push. He, too, watched Adam rise, wipe the sleep from his eyes, shift an appropriate distance away from Ronan on the couch. He, too, said nothing.

“I think we’ll do Peru after all,” he said instead.

* * *

 

Ronan realized what Gansey had done once he and Adam had stepped outside and found only the Pig and the BMW in the driveway.

“Did Gansey pick you up?” he asked, not looking at Adam.

“Yeah,” Adam said, not looking at Ronan.

“Is he dropping you off, too?”

“Nope,” Adam said, popping the _p_ sound.

Ronan nodded. “Fine,” he said, and threw open the BMW’s driver’s side door. He used the time the car took to fire up, the time it took for Adam to slide into the seat beside him to think of something to say, something to admit. That’s what boyfriends did to stop fighting, right? Apologize?

He opened his mouth, and his words came out in Adam’s voice, not his.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said.

“What?” Ronan asked.

Adam stared straight ahead. “For overreacting.”

“Overreacting.”

Adam nodded. “Yeah. I should have known you would have tried to pull something like that.”

Oh. _Oh_ . So it was one of _those_ apologies instead - the apology that did nothing more than stoke the flames. The kind of apology that was, in an essence, an actual apology, but only so far as it was _not_ an apology. Adam knew what Ronan had done, knew what Ronan would say, and was playing the game three steps ahead, three sentences further along. It was a rebuttal for something that hadn’t even been said yet.

“I want to help,” Ronan said. He tried his best to keep his voice emotionless. It didn’t work.

Adam had the nerve to laugh. “Yeah, sure. Do you?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Ronan spat. “Blue’s right. I don’t know where to draw the line. You won’t let me do what I want.”

He knew the moment he’d said it that it wasn’t what he meant. Adam’s frown curled at the edges like warped paint peeling off a wall. “Oh, because that’s what it’s always been about. What _you_ want.”

“You’re not a fucking doll, Parrish. You don’t need me to treat you like one.”

“That’s not…” Adam groaned and turned around, running a hand through his hair. “I’m not asking you to.”

“God forbid you did,” Ronan said, sneering.

“Let me…” Adam stopped, frozen like a hand mid-slap. “I want to be what I want. I want to do what I want. I don’t want you holding my hand.”

Ronan knew from the way Adam said it that the moment he’d said it that it wasn’t what he meant, either.

“Don’t you?” Ronan said. “I thought that’s what boyfriends did.”

Adam flinched at the word. “Don’t,” he said. “You know what I meant.”

The tragedy, of course, was that Ronan did.

This was the duality of the two Adams. One Adam was Ronan’s, if he could call himself so lucky. That Adam drove the BMW faster than he did, fed Chainsaw when he overslept, fell asleep on him on the couch. That Adam was all at once confident yet not. That Adam was the one Ronan had fallen in love with.

The other Adam, though, was the one that robbed the other: of time, of money, of energy. The other Adam had a spot reserved for himself at Columbia University in the fall. The other Adam wanted nothing to do with Ronan, wanted nothing more than to escape the rolling hills of Henrietta without so much as a look in the rear-view mirror.

Ronan hated it. Hated the disconnect. Hated Adam’s obliviousness. Hated how he wasn’t even sure if there were two Adams in the first place.

“I want to,” he bit out, pressing his face against the steering wheel. The car vibrated against his skin. “Don’t you see that?”

“I don’t want handouts,” Adam said. “How many fucking--”

“I’m not giving you a handout!” Ronan said, spinning in place so quickly his seat belt snapped him back. “What the fuck don’t you get about that!”

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “The blank check you mailed to the tuition office with my name written in the memo line says otherwise.”

Ronan’s foot slammed on the accelerator. The BMW, out of gear, growled as loud as he did.

“And now you’re going to throw a tantrum?” Adam asked. Another laugh.

Ronan got out of the car. He left it running. From the window, he could see Gansey peeking out at them.

“Where are you going?” Adam called out, but Ronan just kept walking, picking a side of the road to walk on and picking a direction and _going_.

Adam was right. He was right. He was being an ass about it, but he was right. Ronan should not have done anything. It was always when he interfered that the Other Adam appeared, the one who was prideful of his work and didn’t want anyone other than _his_ Adam around.

He stewed in his own anger for a mile, until his clenched fists went sore at his sides and the summer evening air chilled his bare shoulders.

He heard the BMW approaching from behind. He didn’t look, didn’t stop walking, even when Adam pulled up beside him on the empty road, rolled down the passenger side window and said, “Hey.”

He kept walking.

“Ronan,” Adam said. The BMW coasted alongside him. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Ronan said, and was suddenly _very_ glad Declan wasn’t around, because he was being a whiny little bitch.

“Yeah.”

Ronan stopped. The car stopped.

“Get in so we can talk about it?”

Ronan looked at him. “Are you going to snap at me again?”

Adam shrugged. “Maybe. Depends on the phase of the moon.”

Sliding into the passenger seat of his own car was a bizarre feeling, but it was one that was natural and homely when Adam was behind the wheel. This was one of the earliest ways Ronan realized what Adam meant to him: when the BMW loved him first.

Adam pulled back onto the road, rolled up the window, and started to drive.

The thing about Adam was that he did things effortlessly. He changed gear like a machine, never dropping a rev, always taking corners as fast as Ronan liked them. He drove like the road was an extension of himself, _lived_ like nothing could stop him.

But...

“You’re always tired,” Ronan said, voice rough and splotchy from the evening air, face pressed into the dashboard and eyes burrowing into Adam’s cheek.

Adam spared him a moment’s glance, gaze flitting between the windshield and Ronan. “Yeah,” he said, and he smiled - a soft, sad, knowing smile that belonged on someone far older.

“I don’t like it,” Ronan said. He licked his lips, looked down at the carpet. “That’s what I meant. When I said I wanted to do what I want.”

Adam frowned and the crease between his eyes deepened. “What does that mean?”

“You spend all your fucking time and all your fucking energy on this life you want, and it’s so fucking admirable,” Ronan said, and it was true. He never thought otherwise. “But you’re always so tired.”

Adam shrugged. “Yeah.” He changed gear; the BMW roared underneath Ronan’s ear. “So what? You want to buy my time?”

Ronan was silent.

“Wait, what?” Adam asked, and slammed on the brakes. The night sky outside of Henrietta bled through the windows. The car shuddered and stalled, coming to a lurched stop in the middle of the road. “Ronan, is that honestly what you think you’re doing?”

“It’s my fucking money,” Ronan grunted. He stared out the window past Adam’s shoulder.

“Ronan, you don’t” --Adam swallowed, scrubbing at his face-- “you don’t have to fucking _buy_ time from my life. I’m… I’m your boyfriend, not a car wash.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Okay, _now_ who’s being the prick?” Adam asked, snorting.

Ronan closed his eyes. The stars didn’t stop shining. “You don’t fucking deserve any of this. Any of what you’re having to go through.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t deserve any of what I’ve got, anyways. All my money? I didn’t earn it. It’s not mine. It should be yours.”

Ronan felt Adam’s hand sliding down his arm, folding into his. He pulled, pressing Ronan’s palm into the silent gear lever, covering it with his fingers.

“Are you saying I don’t deserve you?” Adam asked, quietly.

Ronan snorted. “No,” he said. “You don’t.” He wasn’t sure if he said it jokingly or actually meant it.

Adam kissed him.

It was a sudden thing. The BMW shifted into fourth gear, pressed aside when Adam unclipped his steering wheel and fell forward, smashing them both into the dashboard. Ronan grunted in shock, eyes flashing open, and when he looked, saw Adam’s eyes inches from his, he still saw the stars of Henrietta, still saw the world, even though it was Ronan’s reflection looking back at him.

There never were two Adams. There were thousands, _millions,_ and every single one of them was kissing him, wanted _him_ , apologized more through touch and action than words.

Blue was right: they were perfect for each other, flaws and all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > They went to the Barns, because that's what one does when one drives Ronan's car and kisses Ronan into its dashboard. If there was a manual on how to jump-start Ronan Lynch's heart, it was a simple one-sentence line, written in Latin, scrawled in blood on a piece of time-faded paper: return to sender.

Adam knew that they weren't finished yet. There was something else there.

He should have known better. Trying to kiss away problems was more Blue's style - although in her case, the problem had been the whole 'kissing' thing in the first place - and Adam knew that Ronan was less superficial than that.

He was angry. It wasn't just frustration at Adam's perpetual martyr complex, although that was always there, always in the background. This was something different, something Adam had done subconsciously, and it was  _ those _ fights that lasted the longest, took forever to heal, because Ronan was too proud to admit when something small was bothering him in not-so-small ways.

They went to the Barns, because that's what one does when one drives Ronan's car and kisses Ronan into its dashboard. If there was a manual on how to jump-start Ronan Lynch's heart, it was a simple one-sentence line, written in Latin, scrawled in blood on a piece of time-faded paper: return to sender.

Adam was silent the drive home. The resolution of their argument from before was brittle, as though moving too quickly or out of turn might shatter it completely. It was a dress rehearsal - the beginning of the beginning. Adam was fine with that.

He understood Ronan better than he understood himself, sometimes. If he allowed himself to be so cocky, this was especially one of those times. Popping Ronan's hood and looking inside with a greasy flashlight wasn't exactly something Adam could do, but this was the next best thing.

The BMW slid to a stop in the gravel driveway, lights cutting sharp indentations into the brick facade of the garage. When the engine cut, the lights vanished, and the low glow of rural Virginia seeped into the car, dipping Ronan's quiet, content face in cool moonlight.

"What?" Ronan mumbled, and Adam realized he'd been staring.

He opened his car door. "Nothing. Want to go inside?"

"It's my house, Parrish." Ronan blasted open his door with the heel of his boot, and there it was again - the anger. "Let's go."

The Barns were quiet and cool and just shy of being too humid for comfort. Ronan twisted the lock on the door, pressed it open with a certain level of reverence Adam never quite understood, and then they were seated in the den, Ronan's legs kicked up into Adam's lap like they belonged there, Adam's fingers tracing runes into his black jeans. They sat in silence, enjoying the tick of an off-key cuckoo clock elsewhere in the house and the rumble of the window air conditioner in Ronan's room far, far away and the gentle hiss of wind drifting through the trees outside.

A thought. "Where's Opal?" Adam asked, voice nearly hoarse. How long had they been sitting there? Time did not belong in The Barns.

Ronan shrugged, pale shoulders twitching against the leather arm of the sofa. His fingers threaded across, under, over his leather armbands. "With the witches. They said they wanted to take her out for ice cream."

Adam laughed. "You're such a terrible dad."

If Adam knew any better, he would have said that Ronan went a little red. "Every kid needs a little fun every now and then," he said.

"I take it back," Adam said, smirking. "You're more of a mother hen."

Ronan dug his heel into Adam's thigh, and Adam yelped.

"You're not allowed to make jokes," Ronan said. He was watching his fingers work, not looking up into Adam's eyes for even a moment. "I'm still mad at you."

"You don't say?" Adam said, leaning back. Ronan's legs were warm. He felt sleepy. "I couldn't tell."

"Fuck you," Ronan grumbled without any heat.

Adam reached out and grabbed Ronan's hand, pried it away from where the other was running circles around the cracks in his armbands. Ronan's hand was warm, too, and he held it close, like he was afraid of it running away.

This was how to crack open Ronan's heart: give it no place else to go. Adam wasn't one to force things out of other people, but with Ronan, it was the thrill of the chase, the fear of the unknown that made him open his mouth. He made Adam work for it. It was a game for him, something Adam had to win first before he could collect his prize.

"What's wrong?" he murmured, and this time, finally, Ronan looked at him.

"You're leaving," Ronan said.

Adam blinked. "Yeah. Most of us are."

"That's not..." Ronan shifted, but instead of pulling away like Adam had anticipated, he pressed closer, using Adam's hand as leverage, until they were shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye. "That's not what I mean."

"I'm not a mind-reader, Ronan," Adam said. "I'm not that type of magician."

Ronan pressed his forehead into Adam's neck, letting out a long, careful, quiet breath. He felt it tickle down his shirt. "You didn't even ask."

Adam felt a flare of anger course its way up his spine. No - it wasn't anger, it was confusion.

"Ask you about what?" Adam asked. "Going to college with me? Don't you have to be a student to do that?"

"Not what I meant," Ronan mumbled against Adam's skin.

"Then what?" Adam asked. "What did you mean?"

He blinked, and Ronan was staring at him again, eyes frowning just as much as his mouth ever could. "You're leaving. Gansey's leaving. Fuck, even Blue's leaving. Noah's been exorcised off the face of the planet, so who the hell knows if he'll ever show up again." He looked away, briefly. Then, quietly: "I don't know where I belong anymore."

"Here," Adam said, immediately, and it wasn't until he'd said it that he realized he never differentiated between The Barns and his arms.

Ronan smiled, just a little. "Columbia is... fuck. That's far."

"We can do long-distance."

"I don't want to," Ronan said immediately. He looked up, down, away again. "But I know how much this means to you. It's so fucking selfish for me to ask you to stay, and I don't even want to do that."

Adam blinked. Ronan had always been supportive of Adam's pursuit of whatever came next - as much as Ronan was ever supportive about anything that wasn't burning rubber and cursing. This was new. This was fresh.

"What, then?" he asked. He didn't mean it maliciously, and it was a testament to their relationship that Ronan understood the intention behind the words.

"We need to figure this shit out," Ronan grumbled. "I'm not going to sit around for six months when my boyfriend is off doing keg stands on top of the Empire State Building, or whatever the hell it is you do there."

"It's Columbia, not prison," Adam said, snorting.

Ronan said nothing.

"Alright," Adam said. "Let's work this out logically." This was something he did when he was stressed and needed to verbalize, if for no reason other than to get his thoughts out of his own head and somewhere else. He did it a lot when studying, and Ronan knew what it meant. "You want to, uh." He cleared his throat. "You want to come be with me."

"Yeah," Ronan said. "Except I really don't."

"But you also can't leave The Barns," Adam said. "You  _ shouldn't _ leave The Barns. You don't deserve that."

"Long distance doesn't work," Ronan added. "It's just shit they say to get you to buy more greeting cards."

"What about weekends?" Adam asked. "You could drive up to visit sometimes. Or I could drive back to visit you."

"'s expensive."

"Not for you," Adam said.

Ronan said nothing.

Sighing, Adam leaned forward a bit, just enough to press their shoulders back together again. He was tired - too tired. He'd stolen a few minutes of sleep on Blue's couch, but it hadn't been nearly enough. "Okay," he said, sighing. "What if... we just take things slow? As they come, I mean. We figured everything else out on our own. What difference does this make?"

Ronan said nothing.

“Opal deserves you,” Adam continued. “She deserves this. New York City wouldn’t be something she liked anyways.”

“I think she’d like it,” Ronan grumbled, voice quiet and muffled by Adam’s collar. “They’d like her. She’d start a new fashion trend. Two weeks from now everyone’ll be wearing goat hooves.”

“And eating foliage,” Adam said.

“It’s not about me, though,” Ronan said, and he knew they were back again, back to the seriousness and the level voices and the Adult Conversations. “It’s not about Opal. It’s about you.”

A flicker of agitation lit up Adam’s spine as if it were a trail of gasoline. “I’m not responsible for her, Ronan.”

“I never said you were,” Ronan bit back. He leaned away, just enough to where Adam could see the brights of his eyes, the fierceness of his stare. Like lightning, it was gone, and Ronan was back at Adam’s shoulder. “But…”

“But what?” Adam sighed, letting his head hit the back of the couch, faded leather prickling at his scalp. “I’m tired. Can’t we do this--”

“But I want you to be,” Ronan said.

Adam froze.

“I want you to be around,” Ronan said. “If not for me, then for her.” He shrugged; it jostled the both of them.

Adam’s heart  _ ached _ . It ached with the pain of a goodbye not yet spoken, of unpacked suitcases and untainted dorm room walls. It ached with the prospect of late-night video calls and synthetic digital voices and an image that was  _ correct _ , but it wasn’t  _ him _ . It wasn’t Ronan. It wasn’t the two of them, together, like this. It wasn’t family. 

With a smile, Adam nudged him with his shoulder. Ronan made a pitiful sound. “Sounds to me like someone’s got ulterior motives.”

“Sue me,” Ronan grouched.

“Hey,” Adam said. He nudged Ronan again, this time with the tips of his fingers. Ronan came away from his shoulder slowly; he re-positioned them on the couch. “Look at me?”

Ronan fought it for a heartbeat, for two heartbeats. Finally, he tilted his neck and glared into Adam’s eyes, guarded only because Ronan didn’t know how else to live. He was so used to derision, so used to fear. In that regard, they were more alike than they realized, Adam thought. One used nonchalance as a shield, the other used anger. Neither worked particularly well.

“I want to,” Adam said. “I want to stay around. And I will.”

“But I don’t deserve that,” Ronan said. His voice was gravelly and sharp. “You have dreams. I don’t want to be the one responsible for ruining your life.” He tensed. “But I want to. And I hate that. I’m so selfish.”

“You’re a human being,” Adam said, cupping Ronan’s cheek. He reveled in the way Ronan sank into the embrace. In a lot of ways, all of this was so new - so bizarre - that Adam could do nothing more than treat it like a science experiment. Inputs and outputs. Actions and reactions. Objectivity over reality. “You deserve to have impure thoughts.”

Ronan wrinkled his nose. “That’s a weird way to put it.”

“You’re a weird guy.”

“Fuck off.”

They were laughing, curled against each other again, tension bleeding through the loose floorboards.

After an hour of silence, of just being there for each other, of reveling in feeling something that might not last and being okay with that, Adam ran his hand down Ronan’s scalp. “I’m serious, by the way.”

“About what?”

“All of it,” Adam said. “You visiting. Me visiting. Us making this work. It’s not rocket science.”

Ronan grumbled into Adam’s side. He felt the words rather than heard them: “Except it is rocket science for you.”

Adam smirked. “Okay, maybe it’s a little bit rocket science.”

Ronan sighed. “So it’s a compromise, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

* * *

 

For once in Adam’s life, something went according to the books.

He remembered the first time Ronan came to visit him, standing stark and menacing on a New York street corner, the stench of subway and cheap pizza clinging to his clothes, eyes as synthetic and magical as the lights around them. It was a comforting sensation, of seeing Ronan,  _ his _ Ronan, a beast of the wilderness and the mundane, a portable bubble of Henrietta, a time capsule wearing Ronan’s clothes. 

He could sense the discomfort, could see Ronan’s scrunched shoulders and rigid posture, and was proud - proud of Ronan for coming, proud of them both for figuring it out, proud of himself for understanding Ronan as much as he always had. Maybe not completely, at times, but enough.

When Adam invited him upstairs to an empty room and a box of ordered pizza, to a mundane movie and a routine they’d settled into over the summer, Ronan deflated, just a little, just enough.

* * *

 

For once in Adam’s life, something didn’t go according to the books.

He remembered the first time he came home from college, dirty hoodie in one hand and train tickets in the other, the looming, organic shape of the Barns and Ronan’s BMW parked out front a strangely foreign thing. It was a discomforting sensation, of feeling out of place from everything - not belonging in New York, not belonging in Henrietta. 

It almost strangled him, almost made him want to turn around and find something else, find a place that  _ was _ his, because this certainly wasn’t it - but then the front door was opening and Opal was blasting down the front steps and he had an armful of child and an armful of Ronan and no more room for bad thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew once I finished that last chapter that I wasn't satisfied with ending it there; when I realized I hadn't covered Adam's perspective, I pretty much had to write an addition. Also, y'all.... this fandom has sucked me in and won't let me go. I've binged at least a million words of fic in the past week. And I have IDEAS. 😭 How has nobody written a proper Kavinsky/Henry fic before??
> 
> Thank you for reading, lmao. This fandom is incredibly supportive and sweet and I really appreciate it. 
> 
> Come scream about TRC with me on **[Twitter](https://twitter.com/EndoWrites)**!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> **[Twitter](https://twitter.com/EndoWrites) | [Tumblr](https://endowrites.tumblr.com)**


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